Midnight Admissions
by LoganAlpha30
Summary: Set in the 5th book after the trip to the Ministry. A few quiet moments between Ron and Hermione, my favorite pairing of the series in the hospital wing as they recover from their injuries. R/Hr.


**MIDNIGHT ADMISSIONS**

 **Author's Note: I don't own any of the characters, as if I did then Ron/Hermione would have started far earlier.**

The Hospital Wing-Almost Midnight

She had tried to sleep, she truly had, but every time that she'd more than closed her eyes and started to drift off to sleep the memory of the slashing curse cast her way flooded back into her mind and she'd jerk awake. Breathing heavy she'd have to resort to several minutes of struggling with herself before she could calm down, reminding herself that she was back at Hogwarts and she was safe, or at least as safe as was possible. She'd hoped that her short bouts of slumber would last until morning but she had suddenly found herself lying awake at midnight, the silvery moon hanging high in the sky and shining its light in through the shutters on the windows. Ron's soft and even breathing from the next bed over gave her little reassurance as she wasn't sure that she wanted to talk to anyone right then, as it would only delay any and all attempts to return to sleep. After what felt like several hours of struggling to get back to sleep she angrily decided that perhaps what she needed was a bit of movement to work herself to sleep. The pain in her ribs suggested otherwise but lying still on her bed was definitely not working.

She fought through the shooting pains in her chest and side as she sat up, seeing a few stars, before she was forced to squeeze her eyes shut and grip the bed sheets so tightly that her knuckles turned white to keep herself from falling over. When she no longer felt like throwing up she shakily leaned heavily on the headboard to get up to her feet and then stick her hands out in front of her to try and balance herself a bit as she made her way to the window, hoping for a little fresh air. The latch was a bit sticky but she managed to slide it open without causing herself to much pain and as she flung the shutters open she breathed in as deeply as she dared the cool night air and decided that the effort had been worthwhile. After several silent moments she decided that it was time to return to her bed. Turning around hadn't caused her much if any pain but as she took the first couple of steps away from the window all of that changed. Stars popped in front of her eyes and she felt her knees go numb and she fully expected what next she felt would be her face hitting the cold stones below. But just at the last minute her sharp descent was arrested.

"Are…you…mental," Ron breathed out in exasperation in her ears as Hermione cautiously opened first one eye and then another and got an eyeful of the floor a mere hairs width away from the tip of her nose.

"Huh…what…Ron," Hermione weakly mumbled out softly in awe as she caught up with what was going on and tried to push herself back up to a seated position but found the sudden strain more than taxing on her painful injuries.

"What do you think you're doing, you should be in bed not trying to sneak out," Ron demanded angrily as he hefted her up until they were both standing, with her hands on his chest and him reaching up to lightly brush a few unruly curls off of her face so that he could get a good look at her.

"Ron, thank you, but I wasn't…trying to sneak out, I just wanted some air, it was getting to stuffy in here," Hermione replied through a warm feeling that was starting to bubble up within her, starting at her feet and rushing its way upwards towards her head.

"Then you should have asked me to do it, you shouldn't be running around in your condition, you look a little red," Ron chastised her unhappily as he held onto her tightly and tried to keep his temper in check, especially as he looked down at her again and noticed the growing blush on her cheeks and the look of exactly what he wasn't sure of in her eyes as she gazed up intently at him, making no effort to increase the distance between them.

"I'm not helpless Ronald, I can…I don't need your…okay…maybe I do…oh…," Hermione tried to object with and ever loudening tone of voice before she tried to take a step and her knees almost instantly began to give out from under her. In a flash Ron tightened his grip on her and pulled her close, it was only then that Hermione's brain fully took stock of the situation, and just as Ron opened his mouth to speak Hermione flushed a deep red as she struggled to not lose herself in the fact that both of her hands were now pressed firmly up against Ron's bare chest and his arms were wrapped protectively around her.

"Like I said, you should have asked me, at least until you get your strength back," Ron declared with a somewhat proud edge to his words as he fully intended to carefully guide Hermione back to her bed however he found himself suddenly able to do anything more than hold her close, all the while trying desperately to not get lost in the intense gaze that she was casting his way.

"My strength…yes, I just need a few moments and I'll be…fine," Hermione forced herself to say as calmly as she could muster up just then before her breaths became hard to come by, though not because of any of her current injuries.

"I don't have anywhere else to be," Ron added almost on instinct before his mind could fully work out just how close the two were just as his ears began to turn red. Had he been thinking clearly he would have admitted to himself that she looked simply beautiful in the combined and candle and moonlight.

"You…I…I need to sit down," Hermione tried her best to answer him but she felt her mouth go oddly dry and she found it incredibly hard to get anything but a few short bits of mumblings out, leading to several silent moments between the pair as they stared deeply into each other's eyes but moved no closer before Ron finally spoke up.

"Oh uh…yeah, here let me…I'll just…damn…WATCH OUT," Ron mumbled softly as he struggled to tear his gaze away from Hermione's enough so that he could at least attempt to look where the pair was going as he started to lead her back to her bed, all before he felt their feet get tangled up and he started to lose his balance.

"RON," Hermione exclaimed loudly with as much breath as she could muster due to the pain in her side as they stumbled and staggered around the space in between the beds in a vain attempt to regain their balance. Before either could put any kind of a plan into action all of her weight struck him in the chest and the two toppled backwards against his bed. Ron misjudged the spacing between them and the bed and so he only clipped the side of the bed and the two landed hard on the stone floor, Hermione protected from the full force of the fall because she had come to rest squarely on his lap.

"Ow…I think I might have broken something," Ron grumbled with a fair amount of pain in his words as he fully meant to use his free hand to rub his very sore backside, however he couldn't get his hands to leave cradling Hermione in his lap, as she looked more than a bit flustered and out of sorts at that moment.

"Shouldn't I…be the one saying that…sorry," Hermione countered a bit hesitantly as she shifted in his lap a bit so that she didn't feel like she was about to fall off, as the ground did look quite hard and cold to her at that moment.

"Are you okay, you're not hurt are you," Ron questioned with a very concerned and fearful look in his eyes as he set his jaw firmly, hoping against but expecting bad news, as he cautious lifted a hand from her side to gently rub her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

"I don't think so, at least not any worse off than I was before," Hermione answered with a shaky and nervous laugh through pink cheeks before she couldn't help herself but frown sadly when Ron pulled his thumb away.

"Heh…that's good, guess this settles it…I'm not exactly very graceful," Ron tried to say in an attempt to bring a touch of humor to their situation as he began to struggle to keep his ears from glowing.

"Perhaps not, then again Ron I did play a pretty big part in us ending up here…," Hermione admitted with a blush as she averted her gaze to his chest, which she almost immediately discovered was no better than looking him in the eye and so switched to making it appear that she found the fingernails on her right hand very interesting.

"Not that I'm complaining…exactly," Ron said with an unsure frown as he looked around the room and wished that he wasn't sitting on the cold floor as his behind was starting to get a bit painful, but he had no immediate desire to change his current circumstances.

"I should probably…get up and…Ron," Hermione started to comment softly as she couldn't keep the deepening blush from reddening her cheeks as she pushed herself up to more of a seated position before she got a good look at some of the brain scars that hadn't been covered by bandages and knitted her brows in concern.

"Yeah," Ron cautiously responded as a both cold and nervous shiver ran through his body at her touch and he tried to not let it show how much the scars were beginning to sting him a bit.

"Do they…did it hurt…the brain…the tentacles I mean…," Hermione stuttered in her questioning as she hesitantly reached out and rubbed her fingertips across the visible scars on his arms and chest as lightly as she could, while flickering her gaze back and forth between the scars and his eyes in an attempt to gauge his reaction so that she didn't push too hard and cause him any undo pain.

"From what little I can remember yeah, I'm not sure whether it was a curse or a blessing that I don't remember much about it, except for the pain…had some really weird dreams ever since to," Ron replied softly with a forced chuckle as he tried to lighten the situation a bit while feeling oddly honest at the moment and shuddering a bit at the memory of some of his dreams that had become very strange, even for him.

"Really…I'm sorry," Hermione gasped softly with wide eyes full of worry and empathy as one of her hands clamped over her mouth before she looked to be on the verge of tears and her brain went into overdrive, apologizing for something that she knew was not her fault.

"Nothing for you to be sorry about Hermione, it's not your fault that I was no help, more of a burden for Harry really," Ron argued back sharply with a tone of voice that showed clearly that there wasn't a bit of doubt in his mind that Hermione was in any way to blame for any of it and he wouldn't hear of her even beginning to try to feel responsible for any of it before she surprised him.

"You were not a burden Ron, you had been hit with a curse, it could have happened to anyone…it happened to me…," Hermione said fiercely, a wild fire in her eyes, as she reached her hands up and cupped his face with her hands so that she was certain that he would be looking her in the eye as she spoke and know that she meant every word.

"Yeah, but you didn't act like a total…," Ron started to grumble with a sour frown as he dropped his chin to his chest and Hermione effortlessly allowed his face to slip out of her hands before she wanted to ball them up into fists in anger but managed to stop herself and instead laid them flat on the front of Ron's shoulders.

"I could have died, if the curse…if Dolohov had actually spoken the incantation out loud then…I…I…," Hermione snapped out, angrily at first, before her nerve failed her and she had to bite her lip in between the phrases to keep from tearing up while she nervously began to dig her fingernails into Ron's chest, almost deep enough to draw blood.

"He didn't Hermione, that's all that matters…to me," Ron exclaimed loudly at first as he took a hold of Hermione by the shoulders and pushed her away far enough so that she could see the look of certainty on his face to tell her that things hadn't gone as badly as they could have before his whole countenance softened considerably and he suddenly felt very guilty and embarrassed while uttering the last bit.

"Thank you Ron…but Harry…Sirius," Hermione finally forced herself to say through quivering lips as Ron had to set his jaw to keep from showing any visible response to her words outside of worry and concern before she burst into tears and he hugged her close, lightly patting her on the back and hoping that she wouldn't cry for long.

"Harry will need us to be there for him, we'll get through this, I know that we will," Ron reminded her softly as she reluctantly pulled back and brought a hand up to wipe away as many of the tears as she could before she then managed a meager smile as Ron reached a hand up and gently wiped away a couple of her tears as gently as he could.

"Right…so uh, what now then," Hermione called out more to Ron than to herself as it appeared to him that she was trying to make herself believe the words just simply by actually giving her thoughts a voice before a jolt of cold snapped Ron back to reality.

"We should probably get up off of this cold floor already…," Ron acknowledged a tad hesitantly as he fully intended to get the pair up off of the floor, though he made very little effort to actually do anything about it, before Hermione stopped him.

"I'm not cold though, far from it…I mean," Hermione declared with a slight tone of surprise in her voice before she appeared as if she had said a bit too much and blushed about as deeply as Ron's hair before he knew that he had to say something.

"Y…yeah, you do feel warm," Ron shakily responded with a nervous and scared laugh as he slid a hand anxiously up her left arm and both could feel the other shiver at the contact.

"Exactly why…I…needed…to…open…the…," Hermione stumbled through oddly for her as she make a very weak gesture towards the open window as her gaze then locked onto Ron's and both shivered again at what they saw in each other's eyes.

"Window…," Ron could only manage before his body moved of its own accord and he reached out and pulled Hermione forward until their lips met, with somewhere in the back of his mind doing backflips that he felt no hesitation or argument from her, as stars flashed in his eyes and he quickly lost track of time. Her lips tasted like honey; probably he thought the result of some potion or something that she had taken to help the other potions go down easier. It wasn't until they both had to come up for air that Ron's mind processed that she had been fully kissing him back.

"R…Ron…I…," Hermione breathed out in a voice that was barely louder than a hushed whisper as she leaned back and took a deep breath, though without opening her eyes, almost as if she were replaying the scene in her mind over and over again.

"Huh…Hermione…oh God…I'm so so…mmpf," Ron replied in a fluster of words before he was first cut off by the look in Hermione's eyes as she pulled back her eyelids and locked gazes with his and then pulled him back into a kiss that was stronger than the one before as her hands found the back of his neck and ran through his hair, a response that he quickly copied. They breathlessly broke the kiss again and had just been in the middle of taking another deep breath when a cough interrupted them.

"What in Merlin's name are the two of you doing…there'll be plenty of time for that kind of…activity…later on, like during your prefect rounds perhaps…I hear that the old Charms classroom on the second floor is quite popular," Madam Pomfrey exclaimed angrily at first before she let out a rather large breath and managed to compose herself before setting her hands on her hips and scowling down at the pair.

"Sorry," Ron managed to respond with his face as red as the sun before he became too embarrassed to look in Madam Pomfrey's general direction as he felt Hermione drop her head into her hands before burying her face into his chest and bursting into tears, though inwardly Ron guessed that it was more from embarrassment than

"The two of you have nothing to be sorry for, now get up off of the floor before you catch your deaths of cold…," Madam Pomfrey announced softly with a rather stern look on her face as she walked over and helped the pair up off of the floor and back into their respective beds, smiling as she looked back towards them on her way to her office, seeing the smiles on their faces through their reddened cheeks gave her hope for the future.

THE END

Author's Note: Just a short little story that I had in my brain and wanted to get out. I still can't read any Draco/Hermione or Harry/Hermione stories as neither make any sense and don't fit with the characters as we've been given them by Rowling. A lot of the Ron and Hermione bickering is something that I think that neither really even realizes that they're doing most of the time, and nothing meant to actually hurt the other. Ron started to treat Hermione like a sister of sorts back in the second book, that he'd defend her as if she were his sister, especially from Draco. The movies did a good job of robbing Ron of most of his best moments in the series, of giving him lines that make him look bad and altering the story a bit to try to mask the pairings until as late as possible. Like in the second movie where they had Hermione fix Harry's glasses for a nice moment between the two, whereas in the book it was Ron's dad that fixed Harry's glasses. The Ron/Lavender pairing was little more than a stall tactic to me by Rowling so that she could get through the sixth book without having to write Ron and Hermione together, as actual romance seems to be a weak spot for her, most of the romances in the series are glossed over and just summarized. With R/Hr Rowling would not have had to actually go into much detail as she could have left most of their relationship for times when Harry was away from the pair, who seem to get along much better when he's not around and don't argue nearly as much. I wondered why in the OOTP that first Ginny wasn't with Ron and Hermione when Harry first arrived and then later on why Hermione hadn't gone with Harry and the Weasley's after Ron's dad was attacked.

You have to remember that Ron was probably raised a great deal by his brothers, who are all very different, as wizard families keep to themselves and I'd guess that Molly would have sent the boys out into the yard all day to play so that she could get some work done, leaving Bill or Charlie or Percy in charge, and much of Ron's argumentative nature stems from his mother and fighting with the twins and Percy to me. Whereas Hermione and Harry have had much the opposite upbringing and it's been beaten into Harry to keep quiet, though I don't remember Harry often disagreeing with Ron's views where Hermione was concerned in those moments that got her really upset or made her cry, it was just that Ron gave voice to them, and even when he did it was immediately clear that he spoke before he thought, doesn't mean that he has no tact it's just that he wears his heart on his sleeve and often speaks before he really thinks about things, though Hermione herself is no saint in that area.

Notice how she views Pansy, if memory serves calling her a cow, then belittling Luna and The Quibbler describing the latter as trash, using Madam Rosmerta to get in a dig or two at Ron and then of course with Fleur. Hermione's only real reason for not liking Fleur had to me to do with that she was the veela as a rival for Ron, just like Ron did with Viktor. Though for all that Ron was supposed to be slow on the romantic uptake Hermione didn't figure out that Ron liked her either or why he didn't like Viktor so both had that problem. By the time that the wedding came up and effect that Fleur had on Ron was gone and I don't think that it would have taken them as many years as it did for them to get married and have kids, fewer kids than I think that they should have had. To me they should have had about five total kids, a body and twin girls that were older than Rose and Hugo, and adding them in the epilogue would have been easy without them even needing to say anything or actually appear, just be mentioned. A lot of Ron and Hermione's problems to me stems from their uncertainty about their feelings for each other and worrying about whether they and Harry will live or not. We never really saw how Hermione greeted Ron every new year like we did with Harry; she could have given him just as big of a hug and such. For those who like my stories there are more one shots coming, and maybe even another story that I've been harping about for a good long while.


End file.
